Wednesday, April 02, 2014

More Darja: sea creatures, folk tales, etc.

I’m just back from
Algeria, with plenty of work to get to – but before they fade from
my memory, here are a few more miscellaneous observations, written
down on the plane with help from my notes...

On
this trip I took the small, lavishly illustrated book Sea
Fishes and Invertebrates of the Mediterranean Sea,
by Lawson Wood (London: New Holland, 2002). It proved very useful
for checking species identifications, a task I attempted earlier with
mixed results in Souag (2005). Since I was on holiday, I didn’t
attempt to track down fishermen and do a proper job of
identification, but showing it to a cousin yielded the following
lexicographical haul:

There
are plenty of etymological difficulties among these, but clear
non-French Romance loanwords include šaɣəṛ
(Latin sargus),
čarniyya
and zarniyya
(Latin acernia),
čalba
(Latin salpa),
gʷrəng (Latin
conger),and,
judging by the š,
langušṭa.
bərjəmbaluq
is from Turkish, cp. balık
“fish”, but I still can’t identify the first part.

Moving
from wild sea life to domestic animals, reminiscences of life before
independence brought up a number of words I had rarely or never
heard: nhəš نهش “bite
(eg donkey)”, ṣǔkk صكّ “kick (with hind legs)”, ṣhəl
صهل “bray”, ɣrəz
غرز “stop giving milk (cow)”, tkəlləl
تكلّل “curdle”, bəgṛa ṭṛiyya بڤرة طرية “a cow who has recently given birth”, ɣǔṛfa
غرفة “1st
story floor” (2nd
story for Americans). yəmni يمني and šəlli شلّي for
“right” and “left” were equally new to me; usually I’ve
heard ymin يمين and šmalشمال,
or feminine yəmna يمنى and
yəsṛa يسرى.

The
genre of folk tales is just about extinct in Dellys, as far as I can
tell, but it too came up in a few reminiscences. A tongue-twister
(say it ten times fast!) alludes to a short anecdote: dadda
ʕaḅḅʷa lli ḅḅʷa l-bab دادّا عبّا اللي ابّوا الباب
“Dadda Abba who carried the door on his back”. I’m unlikely
ever to hear the tales oflunja bənt drig
əl-ɣul
لونجة بنت دريڨ الغول “Lunja daughter of Drig the monster” or bəgṛət
l-itama بڤرة اليتامى “the orphans’ cow” in Dellys, but the fact that versions of
them have been collected all over the Maghreb – such as this Kabyle version of Lunja summarised in English, or the song Tafunast igujilen – is some consolation; indeed, a version of the latter tale is popular even in Siwa. From near
the ending of the latter comes the following rhyme: when the orphan
brother invites his sister to run up the ladder and escape the well,
she says ħsən
w-əlħusin fi ħəjri, ma nəqdər nəjri حسن والحسين في حجري، ما نقدر نجري“Hasan
and Husayn (her twin sons) are in my lap, I can’t run”.

Usually
I don’t take much interest in French loanwords, but I noticed one
that looks as if it has undergone quite a curious semantic shift: puṭaži
پوطاجي means “kitchen counter”, from French potager
“kitchen garden” (or some non-standard dialect of French?) Behnstedt and Woidich
report that in Biskra this form means “kitchen”; I wonder whether
that is a further semantic shift or a misunderstanding.

Finally,
to follow up on the last post’s themes, I found two more words which
have retained Berber nominal affixes, again without plurals (pardon the etymology): taklufitتاكلوفيت “meddling”,tayhudit
تايهوديت “malice”. (From my 2005 paper, I can also add the fig breed
timəlwinتيملْوين, and the
seaweed species tubrint توبرينْت).
However, this strategy is quite atypical; much commoner is to drop
the Berber affixes and substitute Arabic ones as appropriate, as in
jəgjiga جڤجيڤة “dandelion”
(Kabyle tajejjigt
“flower”) or məjjir
مجّير “mallow” (Kabyle məjjir).